


Homecoming

by AKA_47



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-03-01 03:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2757638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AKA_47/pseuds/AKA_47
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will is lost in the wake of Charlie's death and he shuts down, but he's not the only one grieving. After so much time apart, Will and Mac have to find a way to be there for each other when everything around them is broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> My obsessive writing behavior continues. I'm really glad that it has. I hope this one turned out well. (Charlie is dead, but it's not my fault, so I'm going to say that I made it through another story without killing a single soul).

Will didn’t speak to her the entire car ride home, which would have been hysterical, because it was all he’d wanted to do for nearly two months; be alone with Mac, close enough to touch, to talk to her. But nothing was funny now, and he couldn’t say a word because Charlie was dead, and nothing about that made sense. She’d held his hand, but he hadn’t felt it. He was numb and apparently blind too because he didn’t even notice that the apartment was nearly finished until he found himself collapsing on an honest to goodness bed instead of a mattress on the floor.

“I’m going to take a shower.”

He didn’t mean to ignore her, but by the time her words had penetrated the fog of his brain she had already turned on the water. The bathroom was the only one with a door. He didn’t know why she hadn’t put them on, but the rest of the door frames were empty. He thought he could hear her crying even through the spray of water, the shut door, but she didn’t say anything when she came out, her eyes clear. He wondered vaguely if it had happened before, if Mac had hid behind a door and cried only to emerge like nothing happened. Probably. Why was it that people tried to hide the fact that they were human? Will thought he knew the answer. It came to him even as the question made its way slowly across his mind: because they were scared, because they thought that if they admitted weakness to someone they would lose something, some key to holding it all together. If he broke down with Mac, if he told her that he was lost and he felt like his feet weren’t quite on solid ground, then he would be _less_ somehow. Maybe Mackenzie felt that too. He wanted to ask her. He couldn’t find the words.

She climbed into bed, her head canted to the side as if she were unsure. When he didn’t move she slid the jacket from his shoulders. Her hand rested on his arm for a moment. “Will…” She looked at him, searching. Apparently she didn’t find what she was looking for because she bit her lip and slid under the covers, turning from him.

Apprehension settled in his stomach like lead. It coiled around the air, mingling with tension and grief until he couldn’t breathe for the weight of it. He was hurting her. He knew he was hurting her, and _God_ if it weren’t for the ache in his chest and the feeling that reaching out to her would be like wading through storm tossed waters, he would hold her. As it was he flopped down onto the mattress, shutting his eyes tight in the hope that the world would stop spinning. The silence rang in his ears, buzzing accusatorily.

Charlie was dead and Will had just gotten out of prison. The world had taken a horrible turn while he was just sitting in a cell having arguments with his father (and really, he should have realized that he was falling apart at the seams when he started seeing dead people). While he sat and hallucinated a battle of wits with a man who had never been a real father to him, the only person who had ever really taken on the role, who had given him a chance, was dying of a heart attack.

He feigned sleep, drowning the silence with the sound of Mac’s uneven breathing that told him she was just as awake as he was. He’d never handled death well. Not that he had ever really understood what that meant. How did you handle the _end of a person_ well? He would have loved to see that handbook. He remembered when the family dog died when he was seven, and Will had spent most of the summer hiding under the porch, hoping she would come back for her buried bone. When his grandmother died a few years later he had refused to even go to the funeral. He ignored it when his sister talked about her, not just pretending she hadn’t died, but convincing himself that she had never existed. And of course when his father died… Will still wasn’t sure he had processed that. If recent events were any indication, then he clearly hadn’t.

He wasn’t sure how Mac did with this sort of thing. He knew she’d lost people, including guys she’d been embedded with, but she didn’t talk about it and he didn’t press her. For someone who was awfully fond of sharing her thoughts, she was quiet about loss. You only ever hide the things that hurt. Will knew that better than most. Maybe it wasn’t so much hiding as an inability to express. There’s no way to sum up just how much someone means, and then they’re gone and you can’t even point and say, “look, there it is, that quality that made them different, special, loved.” There’s no way to list all of the things you never said or did, and make people understand just why it mattered.

There were a lot of things that he never said to Charlie.

He knew what Mac would say if he told her. She would say that he knew, that Will had nothing to feel guilty for. He didn’t want to hear that he was blameless. He was tired of hearing how little he had to feel bad about. He didn’t want to try and feel better. Sometimes it’s easier to be angry, and it was a whole lot easier to be angry with himself than with Charlie.

The anger was just starting to build, eating away at the tension and grief, and leaving only blind rage in its place, when he heard Mac’s breath hitch. He looked over to see her shoulders shaking quietly, and just as quickly as it had come, the anger fell away. He was reaching a hand to her when she abruptly slid out of bed, her breath coming faster and threatening real sobs now. She raced out of the bedroom and by the time he caught up she was leaning on the kitchen island, bent double with her hand hard against her mouth to drown out the sound of her sobs. He heard them anyway, ragged things made all the more terrible by the fact that they were muffled by her palm.

“Mac,” he started, but she held up her free hand to silence him. He froze. Completely at a loss. He’d been married for minutes for God’s sake, and before that they’d been broken up for years, and it suddenly seemed as though he didn’t know what to do at all. Mac was the one to fix him, not the other way around.

“I just want to be alone.” She warned.

“I won’t—Mac, you don’t have to go through this alone. I’m right here. I won’t get in your way, I just—I’m right here.”

“Why aren’t there any fucking doors in this apartment?” She said it almost to herself, her voice thick with tears, and she cast her eyes to the ceiling.

He wasn’t sure that she actually wanted an answer. In fact, he was pretty certain that she did not, but he supplied one anyway, because it was something to say in this impossible moment. “I have no clue.”

She almost laughed. He could see it in her face and it made a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. Then her eyes dimmed and he knew that any chance of laughter was gone.

“It’s not fair.” She whispered it first, a cracked little sound that hardly seemed like words.

“It’s not.” He agreed, taking a tentative step forward.

“It’s not fair!” It was a shout this time, one that turned her entire face red.

“I know.” Will tried to ignore how his voice was cracking, how his eyes burned.

“We were supposed to be happy.” She punctuated each word by slamming her hand down hard on the marble countertop and Will winced, taking another step when she turned away from the counter, starting to pace.

She shook her head, “I argued with him, Will, and then he collapsed. He was ready to defend me from being fired, and I just walked away like it was no big deal. All of the things I could have said and I just walked away! And now you won’t even talk to me and I feel like I’m falling apart, Will. All I’ve wanted to do all this time is just have a real conversation with you and you won’t even look at me!” She lost her voice in a sob, “and I’m selfish. I’m really selfish because I know how bad you must feel right now, but…” she raked her fingers through her hair as though trying to pluck the right words directly from her skull, but all she could come up with was, “ _Jesus!”_ Will thought she looked like she wanted to hit something, and he must have been right because in the next moment she had swiped her hand angrily against the counter. He watched as an empty wine glass toppled from it. She flinched as it shattered, her whole body trembling.

“I’m sorry,” her voice was small, broken, her eyes fixed on the shattered pieces. “I didn’t mean to, I wasn’t thinking, I--”

“Hey, it’s okay.” he picked his way carefully across the floor, avoiding bits of glass. In truth, his heart was beating a little fast, and he felt the sadness building in his chest, ready to overwhelm him. Losing Charlie was enough, but seeing Mac like this was almost unbearable.

She looked up when he made it to her, her eyes wide and…untrusting. Sometimes he forgot that she hadn’t had much stability either, that as much as he’d been alone she’d been on her own too, keeping everything together. She’d gone on with her normal life, pretending that everything was okay when it very clearly wasn’t. It hadn’t been easy for her, he was sure. As much as he knew that she was proud of what he’d done, that she would have done the same, he had still made a choice to leave her alone. He just had to convince her that he wasn’t going anywhere. He wasn’t going to check out on her.

“I’ve got you.” He pulled Mac to him, holding her tighter than he could remember ever doing before. It needed to feel real. Her muscles were rigid, but they melted under his touch, and she wrapped her arms around him, crying quietly. His hands traced a path through her hair and down her back over and over.

“I love you.” Even between two sob ridden breaths Will could make out the words and he smiled into her neck.

“I love you, too. That’s what I should have started with tonight. I love you.”

He could feel her tremulous smile against his chest. “Do you think it would have changed much?”

“Maybe not, but I should have said it anyway.”

She looked up, keeping her chin rested against him. “I was just scared, Will. I’m sorry. This must be so hard for you and if you need space…” even now she sounded reluctant and he fought down a laugh at the idea of Mac being capable of leaving him alone even for a minute.

“I don’t need space,” he assured her. “I’ve had nothing but space. I need you.”

She sighed, tightening her grip around him, “Good. I need you too.”

Will couldn’t help but think how simple life would be if people just admitted that to each other more often. He grabbed a broom from the corner of the kitchen and started to sweep up the glass. “Mac, why _aren’t_ there any doors in the apartment?”

Mac shrugged, looking a little embarrassed. “It made me feel less alone, with everything open. I don’t know.”

He paused, considering her. There were a lot of things he wished would have gone differently, but he was here now. They were together. In that moment he didn’t care if they never put any doors up, he never wanted her to feel alone again.

“What?” She asked, a smile playing at her lips.

Will shook his head, “Nothing. Just thinking how good it is to be home.”

 

 


End file.
